"Dear Son... Wish you could hear Dora and Charly sing. There's a light in the window for thee, brother. It would make you cry, at least it does me. You ask me not to grieve myself sick for you. I must weep for all the mental and physical...

Handwritten entry from Rachel Carter Craighead's Civil War diary. News of the burning of Rock Rest, the family's country home in Robertson County reached Craighead. The Robertson County connection came from Rachel's mother, the former Mary J....

Handwritten entry from Rachel Carter Craighead's Civil War diary. As Craighead absorbs the news of a family friend becoming engaged to a Federal, she recalls that 1863 held the death of her brother John. She also recalls the burning of Rock Rest,...

Letter from Robert Rutledge to his father, G. R. Rutledge, explaining the strategic value of East Tennessee and the likelihood of a Union invasion. He implores his father to leave Cleveland, Tennessee, and flee south to Georgia before such a raid...